The Age of Dualization: The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies
Abstract
Poverty, increased inequality, and social exclusion are back on the political agenda, not only as a consequence of the Great Recession of 2008, but also because of a seemingly structural trend towards increased inequality in advanced industrial societies that has persisted since the 1970s. Policies in labor markets, social policy, and political representation are strongly linked in the creation, widening, and deepening of insider-outsider divides--a process known as dualization. While it is certainly not the only driver of increasing inequality, its development across multiple domains makes dualization one of the most important current trends affecting developed societies. The comparative perspective of this book provides insights into why Nordic countries witness lower levels of insider-outsider divides, whereas in continental, liberal and southern welfare states, they are more likely to constitute a core characteristic of the political economy. Most importantly, the comparisons presented in this book point to the crucial importance of politics and political choice in driving and shaping the social outcomes of deindustrialization. While increased structural labor market divides can be found across all countries, governments have a strong responsibility in shaping the distributive consequences of these labor market changes. Insider-outsider divides are ultimately the result of political choice. A landmark publication, this volume is geared for faculty and graduate students of economics, political science, social policy, and sociology, as well as policymakers concerned with increasing inequality in a period of deep economic and social crisis. (Résumé éditeur)
... For instance, access to unemployment benefits and how generous they are depends on prior earnings. People who do not qualify for unemployment benefits must rely on the second tier of the welfare state, typically means-tested social assistance, which often results in significantly less generous support (Emmenegger, Hausermann, Palier & Seeleib-Kaiser, 2012). ...
... The concept of dualisation has also been used to characterise the step preceding financial support: the labour market. During the Fordist era, after WWII and up until the 1970s oil crises, full-time employment was a political priority in many European states (Emmenegger et al., 2012). But with deregulated labour markets there has been a gradual increase in dependence on part-time work among large groups of workers (cf. ...
... Instead, the layering of national insurance schemes "on top" of poor relief, resulted in a dual welfare state (cf. Emmenegger et al., 2012;Marklund & Svallfors, 1987) as access to the "universal coverage" was made conditional upon previous employment. ...
Labour market policies has two aims: cushioning the economic hardship caused by unemployment and increasing employment rates. In many welfare states, responsibilities for such policies are divided between different political-administrative levels. This dissertation aims to enhance the understanding of labour market policies and especially the involvement of sub-national governmental actors, by analysing the role of municipalities in the Swedish context. The dissertation also investigates the involvement of social work and social workers within labour market policies. A theoretical framework consisting of four pillars, structure, content, space, and time, is used to analyse labour market policies. The analysis combines a historical review with empirical data. The findings show that the involvement of municipalities, in active labour market policies, has taken place against the background of three processes: the multi-level governance of financial support, the shifting role of active labour market policies, and the dialectic relationship between financial support and active labour market policies. The divided responsibility for financial support generates incentives for municipal measures that qualify social assistance recipients for nationally funded social insurances. The fear of work disincentives has also been a driving force in the development of municipal activation. The reliance on municipalities to design and deliver active labour market policies opens for greater crossmunicipal differences. An ongoing reform of the Public Employment Service, the national agency that provides active labour market policies, that decreases the number of local offices and increases the reliance on private service providers, is likely to change the role of municipalities within active labour market policies. Many scholars criticise the involvement of social workers, within labour market policies, given the use of conditionality through activation. This criticism calls for further empirical investigation, not least in terms of how practicing social workers position their work.
... Le teorie della dualizzazione del mercato del lavoro rappresentano un approccio teorico utilizzato con successo nella ricerca comparativa al fine di analizzare le disuguaglianze che caratterizzano l'occupazione in Europa. In queste analisi, i paesi del Sud Europa sono tradizionalmente considerati come un cluster più o meno omogeneo il cui mercato del lavoro si caratterizza per una separazione tra due segmenti: il primo (insiders), protetto dai rischi del turnover occupazionali e integrato ai sistemi di protezione sociale, e l'altro (outsiders) esposto a diversi rischi sociali derivanti da un regime contrattuale non-standard (Emmenegger et al., 2012). ...
... La prospettiva teorica che si concentra sull'analisi di questi cambiamenti è detta dualizzazione e, in essa, vengono contrapposti insiders e outsiders sulla base delle differenze nel livello di protezione sociale e dei modelli di rappresentanza (Rueda, 2005;Emmenegger et al., 2012). Tra i principali teorici della dualizzazione, Rueda (2005) sostiene che non in tutti i paesi in Europa la deregolamentazione dei contratti ha avuto come esito la dualizzazione nel mercato del lavoro. ...
... Tuttavia, dal nostro punto di vista, la cornice analitica risulta ancora inefficace nel descrivere l'eterogeneità esistente all'interno dei gruppi. A nostro avviso, questo avviene perché sia gli studi comparativi che supportano la tesi dicotomica (Rueda, 2005;Emmenegger et al., 2012;Rueda et al., 2015), sia la tesi tri-categoriale insiders-midsiders-outsiders (Jessoula et al., 2010) si sono concentrati soprattutto sulla dimensione istituzionale quale dimensione unica che delimita e definisce le categorie all'interno del mercato del lavoro. ...
La recente crisi finanziaria del 2008-2014 e la prossima crisi che si attende come conseguenza della pandemia da Covid19 hanno messo in luce la necessità di superare le tradizionali teorie sulla segmentazione del lavoro. In questo articolo presentiamo il modello teorico di Dualizzazione su Scala Multicategoriale (DSM). Invece di concepire il fenomeno della dualizzazione come una combinazione binaria di insiders/outsiders, proponiamo un modello che esplora differenti dimensioni di marginalizzazione lungo un continuum di posizioni lavorative. Grazie ad un'analisi comparata su indicatori Eurostat e OECD, studiamo la dualizzazione in quattro paesi del Sud Europa (Spagna, Italia, Portogallo, Grecia). Il caso italiano è poi approfondito con un'analisi intersezionale, con lo scopo di mostrare la capacità euristica del modello DSM proposto per lo studio del lavoro non-standard nel modello sudeuropeo.
... It suggests that the growth of precarious employment is the consequence of uneven regulation and deliberate political choices in favor of certain social groups at the expense of others. Rather than a universal move to deregulation and precarization, the result is the deepening and widening of dualization and inequality between labor market 'insiders' and 'outsiders' underwritten by state policies (Emmenegger et al., 2012;Kalleberg & Vallas, 2018;Palier & Thelen, 2010;Rueda, 2007;Song, 2012). For instance, Mitlacher (2007) shows that in Germany the strict regulation of standard employment combined with the loosening in the regulation of TAW has driven employers to increase the use of temp agency workers, rather than generalized deregulation per se. ...
... Indeed, scholars have argued that boundary-drawing is 'immanent' to the 'flexible accumulation' of post-Fordism (Harvey, 1989;Vallas, 1999, p. 94). As this suggests, it is not a coincidence that growing precarity has been accompanied by the deepening and widening of inequality between a shrinking 'core' segment of workers and an expanding 'flexible' segment of precarious workers with explicit state policy support (Emmenegger et al., 2012;Palier & Thelen, 2010;song, 2012). Therefore, research on precarious work must be embedded in 'the wider labour market regimes' and 'the ways in which mainstream employment relations are coordinated and regulated' (Coe et al., 2011(Coe et al., , p. 1096. ...
... In China, it is uneven regulation and institutionalized dualism that have led to rapid expansion of labor dispatch as a major form of employment. This finding aligns with the dualization perspective that highlights the politics of labor regulation and path-dependent institutional change in explaining the emergence, growth, and variations in the role and patterns of TAW across countries (Emmenegger et al., 2012;Palier & Thelen, 2010;Song, 2012). ...
... With this background, the present study focuses on the situation in Germany, which has a highly regulated labor market and provides a generous social security net for the core work force, but is also characterized by a high gender-based dualization of employment (Emmenegger et al. 2012). We address two research questions related to gender inequality in employment during the pandemic recession. ...
... Labor market inequality intensified after the labor market reforms of the early 2000s, which included the flexibilization of the low-wage sector through incentives for employers and employees to generate and take up lowwage employment (Bosch and Weinkopf 2008;Eichhorst and Marx 2011). These changes implied an increased dualization of the labor force, including a polarization between full-time and part-time employees with employment contracts based on the regulations of the "mini-job" scheme in terms of wages and job security (Brülle et al. 2019;Emmenegger et al. 2012). This coincides with both a pronounced vertical and a horizontal segregation of the labor market in Germany. ...
The coronavirus pandemic has brought about a number of partly improvised, partly only temporary, but in every respect diverse and often unprecedented social policy measures in Europe. The edited volume provides an encompassing and longer-term analysis of social policy responses during the COVID-19 crisis in order to ask in which direction the European welfare states on the one hand, and EU social policy on the other hand, are developing as a result of the pandemic with respect to polity, politics, and policy instruments. The book focuses on the tension between continuity and change from different interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Contributions range from single case studies to comparative policy analyses. The chapters in this book study (1) welfare state change during the pandemic in order to contribute to welfare state and regime theory; (2) policy responses in specific social policy domains, their socio-structural effects for particular social groups; and their potential future effects on the social security systems in different countries; and (3) social policymaking as a multilevel process, analyzing different crises responses and discussing the implications for European integration and EU social policy. Overall, the different social policy areas, European countries, and social groups studied in this volume show not only that the welfare state is here to stay, but also that social policy may potentially develop and expand its competences at the European level.
... Scholars have argued that labour markets are segmented into primary and secondary markets, with insiders working in well-protected and well-paid jobs in the primary segment and outsiders working in more precarious, poorly paid jobs in the secondary segment (eg Dickens and Lang, 1993). More recently, this argument has been revisited because the prevalence of precarious employment continues to grow (Emmenegger et al, 2012b;Palier and Thelen, 2010;Prosser, 2016). Dualisation scholars contend that labour market outsiders are particularly affected by processes of globalisation, post-industrialisation and labour market liberalisation. ...
... While dualisation is defined by a differentiation in rights and entitlements or access to services between part-time and full-time workers (Emmenegger et al, 2012a), such differentiation may also take place between part-time workers. As a result, certain workers are more adversely affected by labour market and welfare state changes than others (Palier and Thelen, 2010;Emmenegger et al, 2012b). Dualisation can also lead to a narrowing of insider groups and a widening of outsider groups, whereby some people who were previously considered insiders become outsiders. ...
... Scholars have argued that labour markets are segmented into primary and secondary markets, with insiders working in well-protected and well-paid jobs in the primary segment and outsiders working in more precarious, poorly paid jobs in the secondary segment (eg Dickens and Lang, 1993). More recently, this argument has been revisited because the prevalence of precarious employment continues to grow (Emmenegger et al, 2012b;Palier and Thelen, 2010;Prosser, 2016). Dualisation scholars contend that labour market outsiders are particularly affected by processes of globalisation, post-industrialisation and labour market liberalisation. ...
... While dualisation is defined by a differentiation in rights and entitlements or access to services between part-time and full-time workers (Emmenegger et al, 2012a), such differentiation may also take place between part-time workers. As a result, certain workers are more adversely affected by labour market and welfare state changes than others (Palier and Thelen, 2010;Emmenegger et al, 2012b). Dualisation can also lead to a narrowing of insider groups and a widening of outsider groups, whereby some people who were previously considered insiders become outsiders. ...
... According to the theory of labor market dualization, the persistence of a precarious employment status results from a labor market segmentation that consists of a primary segment associated with normal forms of employment and a secondary segment associated with precarious employment where cross-segment mobility opportunities are low. The segmentation of labor markets was mainly driven by labor market institutions that-in cooperation with trade unions-consolidated a dual labor market by protecting nonprecarious employees from insecurities and displacing precarious employees (Emmenegger 2012;Rueda 2014). This process of dualization was starker in more corporatist countries, such as Germany, that had stronger unions and stricter labor market regulations (Brady and Biegert 2017;Häusermann 2012;Palier and Thelen 2010). ...
... Part of the debate on the transformation of modern labor markets focuses on the emergence of precarious employment as a new form of employment (Emmenegger 2012). The rationale of dual labor market theory is that labor markets are divided into primary and secondary sectors with few chances to move between them. ...
This study analyzes the longitudinal association between precarious employment and physical and mental health in a dualized labor market by disaggregating between-employee and within-employee effects and considering mobility in precariousness of employment. Analyses were based on the German Socio-Economic Panel from 2002 to 2018 considering all employees ages 18 to 67 years (n = 38,551). Precariousness of employment was measured as an additive index considering working poverty, nonstandard working time arrangements, perceived job insecurity, and low social rights. Health outcomes were mental and physical health. Random effects models were used and controlled for sociodemographic and socioeconomic variables. Results indicated that the association between precariousness of employment and mental and physical health is mainly based on between-employee differences and that prolonged precariousness of employment or upward or downward mobility are associated with poor health. We found evidence of polarization in health by precariousness of employment within a dualized labor market.
... With regard to new types of social policy specifically, in particular SI, assessments of union standpoints also vary. A frequent claim is that unions tend to have a status quo bias and block reforms (Anderson and T. Meyer 2003;Brugiavini et al. 2001;Emmenegger et al. 2012;Häusermann 2012;Naczyk and Seeleib-Kaiser 2015;Rueda 2007). Others, however, find union presence to be positively associated with 'new' social policies, for example family policy (Engeman 2016). ...
... various studies argue that unions primarily represent the interests of an elderly, male workforce, in traditional full-time employment, which still makes up the core of their members, while only weakly representing young employees, white collar employees in the private sector, atypical employees, and women (see also Häusermann 2010a; Palier and Thelen 2010). This purportedly leads to unions having a status quo bias, opposing necessary reforms, and advancing the narrow interests of particular groups (e.g., Anderson and T. Meyer 2003;Brugiavini et al. 2001;Emmenegger et al. 2012;Häusermann 2012;Naczyk and Seeleib-Kaiser 2015;Rueda 2007). ...
... In the last two to three decades, the two countries have gone through what Rueda (2015: 109) calls the protectionist processes of industrialisation, where labour market regulations to protect insiders have contributed to reduced labour productivity and high income inequality. In many countries, the deregulation and flexibilisation of employment has led to an across-the-board increase of atypical forms of employment, with the subsequent deepening of insider-outsider labour market dynamics (Emmenegger et al, 2012). The origins and reasons for this labour market dualisation are beyond the aim of this chapter. ...
... Concerned with issues of slowing productivity and with the risk of creating 'welfare profiteers', stratifying social policies aim to set financial and non-financial incentives to attract and retain those workers considered most productive in the labour market. They typically emphasise individual responsibility in job uptake, de facto institutionalisation of a dual regime that strengthens the working conditions of labour market 'insiders' while exerting pressure to activate 'outsiders', even at the cost of curtailment of social rights (Emmenegger et al., 2012). This approach was observed notably in the workfare policies enacted under the Blair and Schröder governments in the early 2000s. ...
When does the EU employment growth agenda also serve social progress? Scholars concerned with the equality/efficiency trade-off generally look at the EU as an agenda-setter. Little attention has yet been paid to its role as direct provider of social rights. Building on a data set of 71 EU measures and 317 judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU, this article evaluates the extent to which EU employment policies helped to advance social citizenship by assessing the scope and distribution of individual entitlements over time (2009–2022). Our findings show that, after almost two decades of silence, the EU not only expanded the scope of its influence over individual social rights but also took an inclusive turn, driven by more ‘universalising’ and ‘capacitating’ initiatives. Looking ahead, better monitoring of the distributive profile of EU initiatives indirectly affecting rights production (such as SURE or the Recovery and Resilience Facility) would help to ensure that this shift increasingly benefits those needing it the most.
... In the last two to three decades, the two countries have gone through what Rueda (2015: 109) calls the protectionist processes of industrialisation, where labour market regulations to protect insiders have contributed to reduced labour productivity and high income inequality. In many countries, the deregulation and flexibilisation of employment has led to an across-the-board increase of atypical forms of employment, with the subsequent deepening of insider-outsider labour market dynamics (Emmenegger et al, 2012). The origins and reasons for this labour market dualisation are beyond the aim of this chapter. ...
... Now followed a political rollback under the governments of Reagan in the United States, Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Kohl in Germany. The deregulation of labor markets and rising unemployment shifted the balance of power in companies and weakened the position of labor representatives (Emmenegger et al., 2012;Thelen, 2001). ...
Based on an understanding of the category of teamwork as a socio-historical construct, this chapter reconstructs four phases of its development and the driving forces behind it. The first phase was the emergence of the group-work concept in the Human Relations school as a response to the Taylorist revolution and its Scientific Management at the beginning of the twentieth century. The second phase was the institutionalization of group-work research as an important field of organizational psychology and labor sociology, with the discussion culminating in the potential of group work in the Humanization of Work programs of the 1960s and 1970s. The third phase was characterized by a changing political and economic environment in the 1980s. In this context, lean-production concepts gained in importance. They brought not only a linguistic shift from group work to teamwork but also a recombination of Taylorism and teamwork concepts. In the course of the 1990s and 2000s, the debates increasingly shifted from manufacturing sectors to the software industry and white-collar work in general. Influenced by lean concepts, the software industry became the birthplace of agile teamwork concepts. The chapter ends with a reflection on the relationship between “real-world” changes and evolution of the category of teamwork.
... How can solidarity between "have" and "have not" working groups be promoted? 106 Overall, our review shows a persisting "haves" and a "haves not" divide, in line with "insider-outsider" divides described by Emmenegger et al. 107 and the polarized job environment described by Kalleberg. 1 We have briefly described how workers in traditional jobs have been provided with fairly good social protection for work and health, which has been especially apparent during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on the other end, where low-wage and self-employed digital platform workers made small and often temporary gains during the pandemic in some jurisdictions. ...
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this commentary describes and compares shifting employment and occupational health social protections of low-wage workers, including self-employed digital platform workers. Through a focus on eight advanced economy countries, this paper identifies how employment misclassification and definitions of employees were handled in law and policy. Debates about minimum wage and occupational health and safety standards as they relate to worker well-being are considered. Finally, we discuss promising changes introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic that protect the health of low-wage and self-employed workers. Overall, we describe an ongoing “haves” and a “have not” divide, with on the one extreme, traditional job arrangements with good work-and-health social protections and, on the other extreme, low-wage and self-employed digital platform workers who are mostly left out of schemes. However, during the pandemic small and often temporary gains occurred and are discussed.
... The most successful part of this strategy, however, has been to increase employment rates (Dellmuth, 2021;de la Porte and Jacobsson, 2012). But despite the emphasis on highquality jobs (Piasna et al., 2019), a substantial part of the increase in employment rates has been through the growth of precarious jobs in 'dualised' labour markets, in which 'outsiders' have fewer possibilities for upskilling or upward job mobility, and less social protection (Emmenegger et al., 2012). And even though social investments have been increasing across the EU since Lisbonespecially early childhood education and care, education and active labour market policiesthey do not tackle poverty in themselves. ...
The link to each of our articles is included. This collection of articles includes our reflections on social Europe, based on insights we have gained into the political dynamics, as well as policy outputs and outcomes across the EU. We offer different perspectives on developments of social Europe, current challenges, and possible future directions. We would like to thank Šćepanović for useful comments on our papers and for a smooth editorial process. The articles appear in the same order as in the journal, and we hope that you find them thought-provoking.
... Mini-jobs, however, have existed in the form of marginal part-time employment long before the "age of dualisation" (Emmenegger et al., 2012). They are rooted in a conservative welfare state with a traditional division of labour within couple household. ...
This review paper critically examines a range of analytical frameworks used to analyse the German mini-job scheme in comparative research on work and welfare. The approaches examined include labour market dualisation in comparative political economy research and welfare-to-work policies in comparative social policy research. The paper claims that using stylized facts instead of a thorough understanding of the broader context of national employment and social systems leads to misinterpretations in terms of policy learning. By describing the institutional context and main drivers of the evolution of mini-jobs over time, based on variety of data sources, statistics and empirical studies, the paper addresses the critical role of this specific employment scheme for gender equality, largely ignored in the comparative literature.
... Para ele, "o capitalismo que existe na estrutura dualista apresenta certas 21 Escrevendo na primeira metade do Século XX, Keynes não poderia levar em conta o avanço do processo de dualização no mercado de trabalho dos países desenvolvidos e os seus impactos na teoria da demanda efetiva. Há, na perspectiva da economia política comparativa, diversas análises recentes que identificam uma tendência a dualização regulatória do mercado de trabalho em países como a Alemanha(Emmenegger et al., 2012; Thelen, 2014). Comparações entre as características desse fenômeno recente e a histórica dualização dos mercados de trabalho latino-americanos, bem como da relação entre a emergência do precariado no norte global(Standing, 2011) e o nosso histórico subemprego estrutural, são uma agenda de pesquisa a ser desenvolvida. ...
Este artigo visa ajudar a compreender melhor a Era Lula, um período em que ocorreu um intenso e surpreendente processo de inclusão social no Brasil. Para tal, são resgatados elementos da obra de Celso Furtado, porque em sua fase pós-estagnacionista a relação entre crescimento econômico e distribuição de renda ganha maior peso na sua análise e porque essa relação e os seus determinantes estiveram na base do processo inclusivo da Era Lula. Esse processo se baseou no aumento da renda ancorado no desempenho do mercado de trabalho, um processo claramente vinculado à dinâmica econômica. Porém, é importante destacar que tal desempenho vinculou-se não só à magnitude, mas sobretudo à forma como se expandiu a produção. É na definição do perfil de expansão (padrão de acumulação) e de sua influência sobre o mercado de trabalho que residem os principais determinantes da relação entre crescimento e distribuição, tão bem mapeados por Furtado.
... Previous literature showed that immigrants are mainly 'trapped' in the lowest strata of the Italian occupational structure, but up to now no study has considered the mobility of migrants within the working class. The labour market deregulation characterizing post-Fordist economies builds new boundaries within similar job positions, and the one concerning the difference between standard and nonstandard employment conditions determines substantial differences in life chances, especially in the lowest levels of the occupational hierarchy (Emmenegger et al., 2012). This is especially true in the Italian labour market, which is characterized by a remarkable process of flexibilization at the margins that systematically penalizes non-standard blue-collar workers (Barbieri and Cutuli, 2016). ...
This article focuses on the socio-economic integration of ethnic minorities in Italy, combining the literature on migration with research on social stratification. We analyse the ethnic penalty on occupational attainment and career mobility, integrating the origin–education–destination theoretical framework with the migration status. Since ethnic penalty is an ‘umbrella concept’, we also quantify the extent to which it is mediated by differences in education and social origin. Furthermore, adopting a diachronic view of migrants’ class attainment, we verify whether the post-migration downgrading is followed by a recovery during the career, considering also mobility within the working class (standard and non-standard). Our analyses are based on the Multipurpose Survey on Households and Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens. The results show that migrants are penalized in the Italian labour market, remaining largely ‘trapped’ in the working class. This inclusion at the bottom of the class structure reduces their heterogeneity by education and by social origin. Moreover, their penalty increases during the career, except when they move from the non-standard to the standard working class. Finally, we find that the ‘unexplained’ component of ethnic penalty, net of education and social origin, is substantial and increases from the first to the current job.
... In both high-income and low-income countries, this separation -which has been designated as segmentation but also "dualization" (Emmenegger et al. 2012) -sets apart a protected and unionized labour force on the one hand from the unprotected sector of flexible workers, including those in the informal or grey economy, on the other. ...
The International Labour Office welcomes such applications. Libraries, institutions and other users registered with a reproduction rights organization may make copies in accordance with the licences issued to them for this purpose. Visit www.ifrro.org to find the reproduction rights organization in your country. ISBN: 9789220349205 (Print) ISBN: 9789220349212 (Web PDF) The designations employed in ILO publications, which are in conformity with United Nations practice, and the presentation of material therein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the International Labour Office concerning the legal status of any country, area or territory or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. The responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles, studies and other contributions rests solely with their authors, and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the International Labour Office of the opinions expressed in them. Reference to names of firms and commercial products and processes does not imply their endorsement by the International Labour Office, and any failure to mention a particular firm, commercial product or process is not a sign of disapproval. Information on ILO publications and digital products can be found at: www.ilo.org/publns.
Social equity is a critical component of social justice and is measured in multiple ways. Conventionally, researchers use literacy levels, workforce participation, political participation and representation, corporate presence, and demographic parity as indicators of social and economic equity. We add law enforcement outcomes to this literature by examining the demographic profiles of convicts in prisons in India for each state and compare it with that of the population of the respective state. To test whether entrenched social inequities have permeated into the law enforcement system, we use three indicators of social identity-religion, caste, and domicile-to create a social equity index (SEI). This is a composite index combining caste, religion and domicile similar in method to the Human Development Index which combines income, education and health. Our indicators are not considered in other popular development indices and is a conceptual innovation. Our paper innovates by combining prison data and census data at the state level over the two latest census rounds (2001 and 2011). We use a spatial panel analysis as well as a distributional dynamics approach to test for bias and transitions over time at the state level. We find that entrenched social hierarchies are mirrored in conviction outcomes and that social identities influence law enforcement. In contrast to earlier studies, we find that states that are conventionally considered to perform poorly in terms of economic and human development have done better in terms of social equity than economically advanced states.
In this introduction to the special issue of Sociologia del lavoro, devoted to labour transformations and welfare policies in the context of the ecological crisis, the authors review the state of the debate, focusing on three emerging concepts: climate justice, just transition and sustainable welfare. They provide an analysis of the academic and non-academic contexts in which these concepts have emerged and the kinds of programmatic questions that they raise for the study of labour transformations, social movements and welfare policies. After discussing how the collected contributions operationalise the three concepts in different empirical and research contexts, the article outlines some critical gaps that warrant being addressed or explored further and propose a few methodological and analytical pointers that are useful for the continuation of the debate and, thus, the growth of a field of analysis that is destined to occupy a major space in the sociology of labour.
In the Fordist era, trade unions promoted welfare state expansion and coverage against risks for the broader workforce. With the shift to the post-industrial economy, however, new economic groups have been left without representation. This is particularly evident for women: despite a rapid increase in female employment since the 1980s, unions’ membership base remains anchored in the male, old and industrial working class. Without the crucial pressure of labour, welfare systems have failed to enhance the reconciliation of work and family life. Under which conditions do unions support the expansion of work-family policies? Marshalling evidence from 20 OECD countries in the 1980–2010 period, this paper investigates the role of political actors in family policy reform. Findings suggest that unions promote the expansion of work-family packages when they are gender-inclusive and have institutional access to policy-making.
Double poverty refers to the lack of both time and income. This study analyses precarious workers’ double poverty, focusing on the case of South Korea, where the characteristics of its labour market perpetuate the risk of double poverty. This study set less than two-thirds of the median free time and less than two-thirds of the median income as poverty lines. Using Korean Labour & Income Panel Study data, this article identifies the double poor, experiencing both time and income poverty in the Korean labour market. It then examines the effects of occupational class, employment type, company size, social wage, trade union membership, and gender on double poverty. It is found that double poverty impacts women workers, low-skilled service workers, and non-regular workers. This study contributes to the discussion of precarious work by analysing the double poverty of time and income of precarious workers. Time poverty limits workers’ capacity to escape income poverty as they are unable to work longer and invest in household production or human capital. Consequently, the workers’ lack of time deepens their precarity.
This study assesses seasonal labour migration to Germany, providing an analysis of the structural role which seasonal work plays in Germany’s political economy, as well as using the publicly available data to analyse the magnitude and trends in this area.
We find that seasonal migrant workers are essential to the functioning of certain key sectors in Germany, particularly in agriculture. Despite this reliance, these workers are often in a form of low-paid, precarious employment which makes them vulnerable to abuse from employers. The ‘dependent’ employment relationship between these workers and their employers is facilitated by a legal framework which allows workers to be employed without social insurance coverage and with limited access to health benefits. The Covid-19 pandemic brought these issues to the fore, as the living and working arrangements often meant these workers were at high risk of infection and illness. Despite the media attention to this issue, there has been little ensuing substantive policy change.
The findings from our data analysis on seasonal work are fourfold: (1) since the ending of the Transitional Agreements for labour migration from new EU members in the early 2010s, there has been a slight decrease in seasonal labour migrants coming to Germany from within the EU; (2) over the period we analyse, Romania has overtaken Poland in all metrics to become the primary sending country for seasonal migrants; (3) there are a growing number of workers from the main CEE sender countries who are in employment with social insurance, but which still show strong trends of seasonality in their employment patterns; (4) migrants from third countries have begun to increase in their numbers, however, it is not clear whether this will be enough to make up for decreasing intra-EU migrants.
Migrants play a significant role in European labor markets and are used as sources of "cheap labor"; often being disproportionately represented in low-wage, poor conditions, or otherwise precarious positions. Past research has suggested that the process of migrants being filtered into these low-end occupations is linked to institutional factors in receiving countries such as immigration policy, the welfare state and employment regulation. This paper calculates the extent of migrant marginalization in 17 European countries and uses qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and regression modeling to understand how institutional factors operate and interact, leading to migrant marginalization. The QCA showed that when a country with a prominent low skills sector and restrictive immigration policy is combined with either strong employment protection legislation or a developed welfare state, migrants will be more strongly marginalized on the labor market. The results of the statistical analysis largely aligned with the idea that restrictive immigrant policy by itself and in combination with other factors can increase marginalization.
Migrants play a significant role in European labor markets and are used as sources of “cheap labor”; often being disproportionately represented in low-wage, poor conditions, or otherwise precarious positions. Past research has suggested that the process of migrants being filtered into these low-end occupations is linked to institutional factors in receiving countries such as immigration policy, the welfare state and employment regulation. This paper calculates the extent of migrant marginalization in 17 European countries and uses qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and regression modeling to understand how institutional factors operate and interact, leading to migrant marginalization. The QCA showed that when a country with a prominent low skills sector and restrictive immigration policy is combined with either strong employment protection legislation or a developed welfare state, migrants will be more strongly marginalized on the labor market. The results of the statistical analysis largely aligned with the idea that restrictive immigrant policy by itself and in combination with other factors can increase marginalization.
Purpose
This article contributes to the debate on how social policies and labour market regulation have been used to limit the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic by focusing on one specific economic segment of European labour markets: private consumption services, such as trade, tourism, catering and other support services.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis combines mixed methods and a variety of sources. First, we built a set of indicators from the EU-LFS microdata for 2019 and the 2018 Eurostat “Structure of earnings survey” and performed a cluster analysis (k-means) on the dimensions and indicators considered. Second, we elaborated EU-LFS data covering 2019 and 2020 (by quarter) and OECD 2020 data, and finally we traced Covid-related policy reforms for the period March 2020–December 2021 and analysed documents and information collected in different policy repositories.
Findings
The paper shows the relevance and characteristics of private consumption services in different countries, demonstrating that so-called labour market “outsiders” are highly represented in this sector and illustrates the policies adopted to respond to the pandemic in different European countries. The paper asks whether this emergency has been a window of opportunity to redefine regulation in this sector, making it more inclusive. It demonstrates, however, that the common approach in Europe has been dominated by temporary, short-term and one-off measures, which do not represent major changes to the social security schemes that were in place before the pandemic.
Originality/value
This article builds on the literature on labour market dualization, but approaches the concept from a different perspective – one not centred on the nature of employment relations (stable/unstable) but on economic sectors/branches. This article does not, therefore, discuss in general terms what happened to labour market outsiders during the pandemic, but rather focus attention on a specific group of workers who are highly exposed to risks stemming from dualization: those employed in the private consumption services. The economic sector perspective is an integrative way of framing dualization which is still under-researched.
Eine der wichtigsten Entwicklungen im österreichischen Arbeitsmarkt in den letzten Jahren war die erwerbsbezogene Zuwanderung aus der erweiterten EU. Dieses Kapitels untersucht die beschäftigungspolitischen Folgen dieser Mobilität. Es wird gezeigt, dass die hauptsächliche Dynamik für einen außergewöhnlichen Anstieg der Zuwanderung ein offener Arbeitsmarkt im Zusammenspiel mit einer Nachfrage nach Arbeitskräften, Ungleichheit und Geografie war. EU-Migrant/innen sind in unterschiedlichen beruflichen Positionen im österreichischen Arbeitsmarkt vertreten. Während Zuwander/innen aus der alten EU in hoch qualifizierten Positionen überrepräsentiert sind, haben Zuwander/innen aus der neuen EU einen vergleichsweise hohen Anteil in niedrig qualifizierten Positionen. Dies kann zum Teil mit unterschiedlichen Qualifikationen und Sprachkompetenzen erklärt werden, aber auch mit der Segmentierung des Arbeitsmarktes. Während traditionell eine Spaltung zwischen „Insidern“ und „Outsidern“ in Österreich schwächer ausgeprägt war als anderswo, deutet einiges darauf hin, dass sich im Kontext der jüngsten Zuwanderung eine Segmentierungs- und Prekarisierungstendenz verfestigt hat. Diese Entwicklung konnte durch ein relativ umfassendes Re-Regulierungsregime, welches von den österreichischen Sozialpartnern ausgehandelt wurde, etwas abgeschwächt werden, wenn auch nicht aufgehalten werden.
Un'etnografia critica incentrata sulla voce dei beneficiari del Reddito di Cittadinanza in un’area marginale, ossia sulla voce di quei soggetti che vivono in una condizione di doppia marginalità – personale e territoriale, nella società.
The chapter inquires into the structural social shift that characterised over forty years of neoliberal societal restructuration. Thus, it develops a sociological reflection on neoliberalism with reference to the positions of Boltanski-Chiapello, Brown, Harvey, Piketty and Streeck. Colonisation between societal domains with different leading logic and social fragmentation, resulting from a mix of dualisation, precarisation and conditionality of labour markets, are singled out as the decisive societal transformations of the last decades (Emmenegger, Fana, Greve, Rubery, Standing and Wolf). The chapter reconstructs how social fragmentation and alienation are faced within societal self-interpretation and how, in contrast to this, sociological critique handles the issue from a reflexive scientific perspective. This analysis methodologically introduces the sociological diagnosis that is developed in the following chapters.
In post-industrial and globalized economies, socio-economic risks have become ubiquitous for workers. Two segments of the labour force seem particularly exposed: namely, outsiders (atypical workers and unemployed individuals) and globalization losers (unskilled workers in offshorable employment sectors), with relevant consequences for party competition in Europe. The coexistence of these two segments of vulnerable workers has brought conceptual ambiguity. Using the original 2019 REScEU Mass Survey on ten European countries, we firstly clarify that outsiders and globalization losers do not constitute the same socio-economic group. Secondly, we look into the micro-foundations of outsiders' and globalization losers' redistributive preferences and political behaviours by showing that outsiderness, rather than exposure to international competition, constitutes a significant driver of income and employment insecurities, and of dependency on social protection and family financial aid.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11135-022-01414-9.
There is a perception that temporary employment is rising in Europe but there is little evidence to support this. If one takes the position that temporary employment should be rising due to large structural changes in European labor markets, then stagnating trends represents something of a puzzle. I examine the puzzle by applying a life-course approach to understand the distribution and trends in temporary employment among prime-age workers in 31 European countries. I compare and contrast changes in the temporary employment rate in a single period of time using cross-sectional data from the European Labour Force Survey (LFS), with changes in the risk of experiencing temporary employment in multiple periods of time using longitudinal data from the European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC). Results from cross-sectional data suggest that between 1996 and 2007, the temporary employment rate increased in Europe by 28%, but between 2007 and 2019, there was little change. By contrast, results from panel data suggest that between 2013 and 2019, the risk of experiencing at least one temporary employment contract rose 36%. Over time, the temporary employment rate stagnated, but the temporary employment risk rose. The contribution provides insight into the nature of employment experiences associated with insecurity.
US and EU trade relations exhibit a set of chronic and secularly unsustainable imbalances, in which new Schumpeterian leading sectors and catch-up growth create growing tension in the asymmetrical and somewhat hierarchical US–EU relationship. These imbalances exhibit two distinct cycles interrupted by a clear structural break in the 1970s and an emerging cycle after the 2008–2010 crises. Each cycle has seen rising US current account or trade deficits with Europe provoke some financial or political crisis. Each crisis produced a US-led solution producing even greater imbalances in the next cycle, with concomitant stress on the asymmetric US–EU relationship. The EU and particularly the northern eurozone economies typically have relied on export surpluses for growth. But relying on export surpluses for growth reinforces EU dependence on the US and the US dollar at a time when US domestic politics are increasingly hostile to trade deficits and tension with China is rising.
Objective
Many welfare states in young democracies feature low effective social insurance coverage, especially in old‐age pension. What explains the ineffective coverage? This article shows individual income instability is a microlevel factor contributing to low effective coverage.
Method
The article used 15 waves of the Korean Labor Income Panel Study and constructed a fine‐grained individual‐level income instability measure, which was used to predict individual participation in state‐run public pension using (multinomial) logistic models with industry, occupation, and cohort fixed effects.
Result
The article shows that income instability is negatively associated with public pension participation, and the negative relationship becomes larger as income level increases. Moreover, income instability inhibits only participation in state‐led risk pooling, but not in private self‐insuring.
Conclusion
The article sheds light on disentangling an individual‐level factor buttressing young welfare states and bears implications for the future contour of welfare states in young democracies.
The chapter focuses on German trade unions’ engagement with the European Commission initiative for fair minimum wages in Europe. The minimum wage initiative constitutes an attempt for a countermovement from above against an unregulated and thus unsustainable European labour market (Harriss, Global Labour Journal 1:9–10, 2010; Seeliger and Sommer, Culture, Practice & Europeanization 4:5–23, 2019).
The research considers how far German unions can formulate political positions at EU-level that are distinct from or opposed to employer views. In the current context of widespread worker discontent towards the EU, trade unions are often perceived as members of discredited elites rather than defenders of working-class interests. Indeed in Germany, trade unions are deeply embedded within the traditional national elites. Trade union representatives participate in company management as members of supervisory-boards. Employees enjoy comparatively high levels of representation through works councils and via collective bargaining mechanisms. German multinational corporations also benefit disproportionately from Europe’s integrated yet disembedded labour market (Hardy, Capital & Class 38:143–155, 2014). Within this context, German unions have managed to secure partial benefits for workers. For example, the powerful alliance between unions and employers in the metal and chemical sectors has in the past regularly resulted in comparatively high wage increases despite being exposed to high rates of global competition (Lehndorff, S. (2012) p. 94; see also Schulten, T. (2018)). The large industry unions IG Metall and IG BCE tend to operate as part of a distributional coalition with employers (Höpner, Leviathan 35:310–347, 2007).
This chapter considers how German unions’ deep embeddedness within national industrial elites generates relatively high levels of influence on the part of organised labour, but also high sensitivity for employer demands in a national competitive alliance.
Liberalization poses significant challenges for the continued provision of collective goods within coordinated market economies (CME). Extant scholarship suggests two dominant sets of responses. Either CMEs continue to rely on employer coordination, but only for a privileged core, leading to dualization. Or, in cases where the state enjoys high capacity, the state instead compensates for liberalization but ends up crowding out employer coordination. In both cases, the result is decreasing employer coordination. We argue that in CMEs, the state may also play the role of “orchestrator” by supporting the revitalization of employer coordination. It does so through the deployment of ideational and institutional resources that mobilize employers’ associations on a voluntary basis. Applying our framework to a core area of coordinated capitalism, vocational education and training, we show that in both Germany and Switzerland, this indirect and soft form of state intervention was instrumental for turning around their crisis-stricken vocational training systems.
This article aims to empirically explore how European labour markets are segmented and who the outsiders are. The article moves beyond the dichotomous approach to understanding labour market division, often based solely on examining employment relationships. Taking a multi-dimensional approach to defining labour market precariousness, this study incorporates aspects such as income, job prospects and subjective insecurity. Latent Class Analysis is used on data taken from the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey to extend the traditional definition of outsider-ness. Four labour market segments are found: insiders and three different types of outsiders: typical outsiders, dead-end insiders and subjective outsiders. Looking at the cross-national aspect, variations are found in the segmentation patterns, especially in terms of who the outsiders are. The findings show the need to examine various aspects of labour precariousness in order to capture the complexity of post-industrialised labour markets and identify different types of outsiders across Europe that need to be protected for building a more cohesive society.
Trade unions are often said to be hostile to a universal basic income (UBI). Their judgement may be affected by factors such as their work ethic, perceptions of the unemployed and preferences for labour decommodification. Yet, most studies fail to sketch out the reasons for which unions oppose or support a UBI from a normative standpoint. To understand the impact of ideology on unions’ appreciation for a UBI, I integrate results from 62 questionnaires with 27 in-depth qualitative interviews. This study illustrates that unions’ preferences for a UBI are associated with their theoretical understanding of labour, diverging substantially across welfare regimes. Whereas unions from Bismarckian and Nordic countries are generally opposed to a UBI, organizations from Liberal and Mediterranean countries tend to see UBI as a legitimate policy option. However, in some circumstances they set aside the policy for pragmatic reasons, thus disconnecting their normative orientations from perceptions of its concrete viability.
The Dual Labour Market theory suggests that in collective bargaining, the perceived threat of outsiders leads to a more beneficial outcome for insiders, while the outsiders are further marginalized. The history of part-time employment in the Dutch labour market suggests a different path. After female labour force participation started to increase in the 1970s, the Netherlands witnessed a growing divide between core workers with a ‘standard employment relationship’, who were mostly male breadwinners, and part-time working women who were often underpaid and had little protection against dismissal and other social risks. Flexible part-time jobs, however, were not just desired by women who aspired to combine work and care, these jobs also fitted the needs of certain businesses, particularly in the retail sector. To prevent low wage competition between retail companies, unions in the retail sector started to demand equal treatment between part-time and full-time employees. To mitigate the burden of more expensive part-time jobs, however, several organizations promoted high-quality part-time work across the sectors so that part-time workers would not crowd in one sector. Eventually, this programme was meant to contribute to making voluntary part-time work a legitimate and fully fledged option in the Dutch labour market
This study aims to deepen our understanding of social investment expansion proposing a political learning mechanism to link existing institutional and political explanations. When resources are limited, increased spending in social investment often comes at the expense of politically costly retrenchment of established social insurance policies. Previous studies suggest that this trade-off results in existing entitlements crowding out new policies, and that party ideology plays less of a role in determining social policy expansion. I argue that this is because parties face an electoral dilemma, as individual preferences for social investment and social insurance have been shown to differ between groups that partly overlap in their voting behaviour. Applying a policy diffusion framework to the analysis of childcare expenditure, this study proposes that policymakers learn from the political consequences of past decisions made by their foreign counterparts and update their policy choice accordingly. The econometric analysis of OECD data on childcare expenditure shows that governments tend to make spending decisions that follow those of ideologically similar cabinets abroad and that left-wing governments with a divided electorate tend to reduce childcare expenditure if a previous expansionary decision of a foreign incumbent is followed by an electoral defeat.
Democracies worldwide are under stress. Two distinct families of explanation can be identified by the relative emphasis they place on the cultural versus the economic. Protesting against this dichotomy, there are those who insist that economic and cultural grievances interact. A conceptual scheme which ties together the economic and the cultural through interaction, however, rests on a prior separation. In this article, a richer and more plausible account of the relationship between transformations of work and contemporary democratic decay is developed. This account is based on a social practice model of work, in which the economic and the cultural are entirely intertwined. The social practice of work is among other things a privileged site for the realisation of certain ‘goods of work’. These include self-respect, self-esteem and self-realisation. It is by altering expectations about the realisation of the goods of work that transformations of work have contributed to an environment within which democracies are under stress.
This study compares the labour market trajectories of the temporary employed in Norway with those in Sweden. Sweden’s employment protection legislation gap between the strict protection of permanent employment and the loose regulation of temporary employment has widened in recent decades, while Norway has maintained balanced and strict regulation of both employment types. The study asserts that the two countries differ concerning the distribution of trajectories, leading to permanent employment and trajectories that do not create firmer labour market attachment. Using sequence analysis to analyse two-year panels of the labour force survey for 1997–2011, several different trajectories are discerned in the two countries. The bridge trajectories dominate in Norway, while dead-end trajectories are more common in Sweden. Moreover, the bridge trajectories are selected to stronger categories (mid-aged and higher educated) in Sweden than in Norway. The results are discussed from the perspective of labour market dualisation.
This article provides a comparative study of the labour market and social policy measures introduced in light of the COVID-19 crisis in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom between March 2020 and January 2021. Its main aim is to understand whether the crisis response has changed the structures of the welfare states concerned. Focusing in particular on the differences regarding the crisis measures taken for individuals in ‘standard employment’ and ‘non-standard workers’ in each country, it argues that, although extensive temporary protection instruments were introduced for both groups during the crisis, these did not lead to an immediate convergence as regards these groups’ social protection. Rather than changing the underlying structures of welfare systems, many of the measures in fact highlighted the specific vulnerabilities of large segments of Europe’s labour markets. States have, however, granted social compensation at unprecedented levels, which could result in improved infrastructures and a clearer understanding of the responsibility of the welfare state in future emergencies.
This article develops an analytical framework for exploring the complex (and sometimes contradictory) relationship between industrial relations and inequality. It discusses whether, under what conditions and to what extent the often-made claim that industrial relations can contribute to reducing inequality is warranted, by focusing on the two dimensions of intra- and inter-class inequality. Following the main lines of the proposed analytical framework, the article then presents a selective review of the empirical literature and how the contributions in this issue can help to refine and integrate the proposed analytical framework. The conclusions present some reflections on how the role of industrial relations in addressing inequality can be enhanced.
The adoption of digital technologies challenge existing institutional approaches towards labour markets segmentation and dualisation by dissolving the employer-employee nexus. When national governments adapt to digitalisation by deregula-tion they risk to fostering "flexibility at the margin" which can reinforce digital cleavages at the intersection of tasks, skills and new technology. This is because deregulation threatens the existing country-based employment and industrial rela-tions structures by favoring companies fissuring the labour markets while reducing employment protections for all workers. In the paper we illustrate this argument by shedding light on the case of Belgium as one of the countries in Europe with a gen-erous and encompassing system of collective bargaining and strong employees' representation structures, and which has been experiencing a deregulatory trend in response to digitalisation, following the introduction of the 2016 law "De Croo".
Whilst the comparative political economy literature has regarded the UK as among the least dualised countries when it comes to non-standard employment, thanks to its flexible labour market and predominantly means-tested system of social pro-tection, scholars in the precariousness literature have highlighted the increased pre-carity and insecurity of many non-standard workers, highlighting the extreme con-ditionality and punitive policies typical of the UK welfare system as an important contributory factor. This paper aims to bridge the gap between these literatures. It analyses the experience of social protection of a specific category of non-standard workers, namely temporary agency workers, in accessing both active and passive unemployment policies. It finds how welfare reforms introduced in the past two decades in association with a general welfare discourse centred on the concepts of deservingness and dependency have created important barriers in accessing un-employment protection, not just based on institutional features but also on social perceptions.
This article analyses the old and new dualisation processes that have emerged in Italy in the last twenty years. By focusing on the dualising outcomes of labour market and antipoverty policies, it addresses the trajectories followed by dualisa-tion and their effects on the divides between insiders and outsiders. Within this framework it is argued that dualisation is not a stable equilibrium, but rather the result of the interconnections between institutional arrangements and the variable decisions of social and political actors.
Dual labour markets have been a specific feature of employment systems in Con-tinental Europe after an initial wave of deregulation that started in the 1980s in a situation of high and persistent unemployment. Since then, the institutional duali-sation of employment by type of contract has had massive implications on the quality and quantity of jobs. However, while dualisms were conceived as inevita-ble and stable, the perception has become more nuanced and dynamic, account-ing for partial dedualising steps observable over the last decade in particular. This paper gives an overview of the history of dualisation and dual labour markets before addressing current challenges arising from the digital transition and the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes with a discussion about potential policies to overcome labour market dualisms.
What explains the origins and pattern of retrenchment dynamics in Swedish old-age pensions and unemployment insurance during the 1990s? Although the economic crisis created pressure to scale back both programs, the author argues that retrenchment only occurred when and where the Social Democratic Party and some segments of the labor movement supported change. This finding suggests that the political importance of organized labor in retrenchment politics depends on the relationship between welfare-state programs and interest group structure. When interest group structure is characterized by solidaristic, centralized, encompassing organiza-tions, the old class-based power resource model has more explanatory bite than Pierson's new politics of the welfare-state approach. T he past two decades have been marked by far-reaching changes in the welfare states of the advanced capitalist countries. In the United States and Great Britain, conservative governments largely failed in their attempts to dismantle the welfare state, but substantial retrenchment occurred none-theless (Pierson, 1994). In the Christian Democratic welfare states of West-ern Europe, governments also legislated sweeping reforms designed to trans-form "vices" into "virtues" by reversing the dynamic of welfare without work and restoring balance in the welfare states of the Netherlands, France, and 1063
This article investigates the politics of change in coordinated market econo\mies, and explores why some countries (well known for their highly cooperative arrangements) manage to sustain coordination when adjusting to economic transformation, while others fail. The authors argue that the broad category of “coordinated market economies” subsumes different types of cooperative engagement: macrocorporatut forms of coordination are characterized by national-level institutions for fostering cooperation and feature a strong role for the state, while forms of coordination associated with enterprise cooperation more typically occur at the level of sector or regional institutions and are often privately controlled. Although these diverse forms of coordination once appeared quite similar and functioned as structural equivalents, they now have radically different capacities for self-adjustment.
The role of the state is at the heart of the divergence among European coordinated countries. A large public sector affects the political dynamics behind collective outcomes, through its impact both on the state's construction of its own policy interests and on private actors' goals. Although a large public sector has typically been written off as an inevitable drag on the economy, it can provide state actors with a crucial political tool for shoring up coordination in a postindustrial economy. The authors use the cases of Denmark and Germany to illustrate how uncontroversially coordinated market economies have evolved along two sharply divergent paths in the past two decades and to reflect on broader questions of stability and change in coordinated market economies. The two countries diverge most acutely with respect to the balance of power between state and society; indeed, the Danish state—far from being a constraint on adjustment (a central truism in neoliberal thought)—plays the role of facilitator in economic adjustment, policy change, and continued coordination.
The French and German political economies have been significantly reconfigured over the past two decades. Although the changes have often been more piecemeal than revolutionary, their cumulative effects are profound. The authors characterize the changes that have taken place as involving the institutionalization of new forms of dualism and argue that what gives contemporary developments a different character from the past is that dualism is now explicitly underwritten by state policy. They see this outcome as the culmination of a sequence of developments, beginning in the field of industrial relations, moving into labor market dynamics, and finally finding institutional expression in welfare state reforms. Contrary to theoretical accounts that suggest that institutional complementarities support stability and institutional reproduction, the authors argue that the linkages across these realms have helped to translate employer strategies that originated in the realm of industrial relations into a stable, new, and less egalitarian model with state support.
A recent "revisionist" literature characterizes the pronounced rise in U.S. wage inequality since 1980 as an "episodic" event of the first half of the 1980s driven by nonmarket factors (particularly a falling real minimum wage) and concludes that continued increases in wage inequality since the late 1980s substantially reflect the mechanical confounding effects of changes in labor force composition. Analyzing data from the Current Population Survey for 1963 to 2005, we find limited support for these claims. The slowing of the growth of overall wage inequality in the 1990s hides a divergence in the paths of upper-tail (90/50) inequality-which has increased steadily since 1980, even adjusting for changes in labor force composition-and lower-tail (50/10) inequality, which rose sharply in the first half of the 1980s and plateaued or contracted thereafter. Fluctuations in the real minimum wage are not a plausible explanation for these trends since the bulk of inequality growth occurs above the median of the wage distribution. Models emphasizing rapid secular growth in the relative demand for skills-attributable to skill-biased technical change-and a sharp deceleration in the relative supply of college workers in the 1980s do an excellent job of capturing the evolution of the college/high school wage premium over four decades. But these models also imply a puzzling deceleration in relative demand growth for college workers in the early 1990s, also visible in a recent "polarization" of skill demands in which employment has expanded in high-wage and low-wage work at the expense of middle-wage jobs. These patterns are potentially reconciled by a modified version of the skill-biased technical change hypothesis that emphasizes the role of information technology in complementing abstract (high-education) tasks and substituting for routine (middle-education) tasks. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
European unemployment has been steadily increasing for the last 15 years and is expected to remain very high for many years to come. In this paper, we argue that this fact implies that shocks have much more persistent effects on unemployment than standard theories can possibly explain. We develop a theory which can explain such persistence, and which is based on the distinction between insiders and outsiders in wage bargaining. We argue that if wages are largely set by bargaining between insiders and firms, shocks which affect actual unemployment tend also to affect equilibrium unemployment. We then confront the theory to both the detailed facts of the European situation as well as to earlier periods of high persistent unemployment such as the Great Depression in the US.
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